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290 Humphrey Sydenham Jacob and Esau:election,reprobation,opened and discussed by way of sermon at Paul’s Cross,March 4,1622 published 1626 He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy; and whom he will, he hardeneth Rom. 9:18 The text holds some analogy with the times we live in, fraught with no less subtlety than danger. . . . In sacred riddles, what we cannot resolve, give us leave to contemplate; and what not comprehend, admire . . . and when our reason is once nonplussed, we are hushed in a contented wonder. Where we may behold the Almighty (in a full shower) pouring down his blessings upon some, scarce dewing or sprinkling them on others; softening this wax and hardening that clay with one and the self-same sun (his will), and yet that will not clouded with injustice. Here is that will not only stagger but entrance a carnal apprehension : not a circumstance which is not equally loaded with doubt and amazement. . . . . . . Part I. He will That the will of God is the principal efficient cause of all those works which he doth externally from himself, so that there is no superior or precedent cause moving and impelling it, shines to us no less from the eternity of his will than the omnipotency. . . . In his eternal decree, why are some marked out as inheritors of his Zion, others again expulsed and banished those blessed territories? They as vessels of mercy, for the manifestation of his goodness; these of fury, for the promulgation of his justice? Doubtless, the will & the bene-placitum of the Almighty. . . . . . . . . . In matters therefore of election, we acknowledge not a cause more classic1 than the cuius vult here specified: he will have mercy on whom he will. Insomuch that in the parable of the householder (Matt. 20), I find but a sic volo as a sufficient and just cause 1 {of the highest importance} 291 Humphrey Sydenham of his designs: I will give to this last as much as to thee; & yet this will so clothed with a divine justice that God is not said to will a thing to be done because it is good, but rather to make it good because God would have it to be done. For proof whereof, a sweet singer of our Israel instances in those wonderful passages of Creation, where ’tis first said that Deus creavit, God created all things, and the valde bonum comes aloof,2 he saw that they were all good. And the moral portends but this, that every thing is therefore good because it was created, and not therefore created because it was good; which doth wash and purge the will of the Almighty from any stain or tincture of injustice. . . . . . . To inquire then the cause of God’s will were an act of lunacy, not of judgment; for every efficient cause is greater than the effect; now, there’s nothing greater than the will of God, and therefore no cause thereof. For if there were, there should something preoccupate3 that will, which to conceive were sinful, to believe blasphemous. If any then (suggested by a vainglorious inquiry) should ask why God did elect this man and not that, we have not only to resolve, but to forestall so beaten an objection: because he would. But why would God do it? Here’s a question as guilty of reproof as the author, who seeks a cause of that, beyond or without which there is no cause found, where the apprehension wheels and reason runs giddy in a doubtful gyre. . . . Here a scrupulous and human rashness should be hushed, and not search for that which is not, lest it find not that which is. For as the same Father {Augustine saith} . . . Let him that can, descry the wonders of the Lord in this great deep, but let him take heed he sink not. . . . Why God doth to this man so, and to that not so, who dare to expostulate? And why to this man, thus; to that, otherwise ? Far be it that we should think it in the judgment of the clay, but of the potter. Down then with this aspiring thought, this ambitious desire of hidden knowledge, and make not curiosity the picklock of divine secrets. Know that such mysteries are doubly barred up in the coffers of the Almighty, which thou mayst strive to violate, not open. And therefore if thou wilt needs trespass upon Deity, dig not in its bosom; a more humble adventure suits...

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